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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 8, No. 40 |
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THREE VOYAGES INTO DARKNESS |
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is comforted by Susan Sarandon; Upper Right: Viggo Mortensen gets his orders from Armin Mueller-Stahl; At Left: FBI Agent Jamie Foxx braces for action. |
Three Films Probe the Darkness of Today's World
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
If you want to come face to face with what a troubled and unpleasant world we now inhabit, here's my suggestion: Do what I did last week and go see these three new action-filled feature films back-to-back: "In the Valley of Elah," "Eastern Promises" and "The Kingdom."
The first two are as artful as they are profound while the third almost stumbles over its own message, if there really was any intended, while making way for more action than you may be able to follow without a map.
Paul Haggis' "In the Valley of Elah" is, at heart, a murder mystery. Aging ex-Army policeman Tommy Lee Jones desperately seeks to find out why his son was savagely stabbed to death, then cut into pieces, burned and left in a vacant lot just days after he came home safe from a combat tour in Iraq. The deeper he probes into the case the Army wants to write off as "unsolved," the more he begins to realize how his son--and perhaps way too many U.S. military servicemen--have descended into savagery after being engaged in a senseless and cruel war.
In "Eastern Promises," London midwife Naomi Watts is drawn deep into the hidden world of the Russian Mafia when she takes home the diary of a dead Russian immigrant woman, hoping to find relatives who might adopt the newborn child the woman left behind. Instead, she finds an incredibly brutal clan of immigrants who are building a new life in the West by committing gangster-like crimes.
In "The Kingdom," an elite team of FBI agents enters Saudi Arabia against official U.S. policy, determined to track down and exact their vengeance on the terrorists who engineered a massacre of American servicemen, their wives and children in a nation that was supposed to be our ally in the Middle East. In a sense, they are declaring their own jihad and pretending it's something much more patriotic than that.
For me, "In the Valley of Elah," written and directed by Paul Haggis, is the best of the three because of its focus on the emotional development of the characters. This has been a Haggis trademark since I first became an admirer of his while devouring every episode of his failed CBS TV drama "EZ Streets" in the late 1990s. He wrote Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby," the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 2004, then wrote and directed the brilliant and daring "Crash," which was the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 2005. After that, he co-authored Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima," another Best Picture nominee the following year.
What this new film does is suggest that the conditions of war in Iraq are transforming the brave men and women who have been fighting it for us. We already know this happens because it clearly happened in the Vietnam war. If you're never quite sure who the enemy really is until the roadside bomb goes off or the sniper draws a bead on you, it's a recipe for paranoia. Haggis' story goes the next step, suggesting it's possible that the easy disposal of human life at the pulling of a trigger is not something one unlearns so quickly when you come home to America. In fact, he seems to be telling us that in some soldiers its a matter of reflex-training, not judgment.
Haggis has front-loaded his cast with some of Hollywood's most gifted actors. Tommy Lee Jones seems to actually be the anguished, stubborn and angry father that he plays. That deeply-lined, used-up face of his is a living portrait of despair. Watch the way Jones walks in some scenes. You can tell what's in his heart by the very way he seems to crumple in on himself with barely-contained grief and too long contained fury.
The ever inventive Susan Sarandon has the small, but important role of Jones' wife. Her pain when she learns of her son's death, then forces herself to look at his ruined remains makes your intestines twist inside you. Jones and Sarandon are masters of their craft and watching them feast on this strong screenplay is an education in film acting at its best.
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Charlize Theron turns in another sizzling performance as a police detective in "In the Valley of Elah"--and still keeps your libido on ready alert. |
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But we also have the impressive Charlize Theron as the local police detective who helps Jones find the clues the military police have overlooked. Theron is such a stunningly beautiful woman that she could have had a major career without ever taking a chance on unglamorous roles. Instead, she seems to relish parts that take her away from her looks and force us to see her deep reserve of talent. In "Elah" she once again demonstrates that her Best Actress Oscar for "Monster" was no fluke. She plays a serious career woman who's also a struggling single mom. She's working among sexist men who never engage her intellectually, but she sees how Jones dredges up clues nobody else could see and is inspired to work even harder to help him reach the truth about his son's death.
Happily, Haggis doesn't try to press Jones
and Theron into a romantic situation none of us would have believed
anyway. Though Jones' respect for her grows steadily, there's
not a clinch between them and that's fine. If you feel you have
to have a love interest to get through a movie today, better
forget it.
Jones seems a cinch for an Oscar nomination for his performance
and the film itself ought to be in contention for Best Picture.
In "Eastern Promises," the plot turns on the character played by Naomi Watts, another constantly interesting actress who is so much more than the handsome, shapely woman we see so often in the magazines. Watts has managed to showcase her talent in some surprising circumstances, including her work in horror pictures like "The Ring" (2002) and "King Kong" (2005), but she's often magnificent when she has a really meaty role as she has in "Eastern Promises."
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hitman, chatting up nurse Naomi Watts in London. |
In the story, Watts' character lives on the fringes of the Anglo-Russian community in London. She lives with her uncle, who's a Russian immigrant, and her English mother, but she's had no exposure to the kind of life led by members of the Russian "family" ruled by Armin Mueller-Stahl, a London restauranteur who's the "godfather" of a Russian mafia clan. When he learns she has the diary that may link his profligate son (Vincent Cassel) to the dead woman, he first attempts to get it from her with his courtly manner, stressing their common links to Mother Russia. When that fails, he turns the matter over to his vicious son and his trusted lieutenant, a coldblooded killer played by Viggo Mortensen.
Mortensen soon moves into the spotlight when he begins to fall in love with Watts and starts seeing himself through her eyes. There is more to him than meets the eye anyway, but until he starts to grow in likeability halfway through he movie, there seems to be no man in all of "Eastern Promises" that will be able to line up with Watts against the awesome forces of evil that soon surround her.
I can't make a great case for originality in terms of the "Eastern Promises" storyline, but it's deeply suspenseful and there's engrossing detail about how the Russian immigrant community functions in London and how this all-too-real mafia-style criminal element has taken hold there. Where it really approaches classic film stature is in the final half when Mortensen's character turns toward salvation and suddenly he's fighting against his own "family" of killers.
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from Middle Earth and the elves and hobbits of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy while playing a Russian killer in "Eastern Promises." |
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Anybody who has seen "Eastern Promises" is going to be talking about the fight Mortensen has with two hulking Russian hitmen who come to kill him in a London steam room. Mortensen plays the scene entirely in the nude--believe me, there are no surprises left for Viggo to show us--and it is one of the most terrifying, most dramatically choreographed fight scenes you'll ever see. As one friend told me, "It's like the nude wrestling scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates in 'Women in Love,' only with knives."
This is a brilliantly directed film, once more proving that former horror movie helmer David Cronenberg is now a major director of truly serious films.
You may find the ending of "Eastern Promises" too abrupt to be satisfying, but the film has so many other merits that you'll be willing to overlook any frustration you may feel at the windup. One of those merits: The truly frightening performance of the veteran Armin Mueller-Stahl, who is definitely going to be a contender in the Supporting Actor Oscar sweepstakes next year.
Our third feature film, "The Kingdom," is much more an action film than a film of profound ideas. Jamie Foxx, Best Actor Oscar winner for his dead-on performance as blues legend Ray Charles in "Ray," plays the head of a special FBI team that covertly goes to Saudi Arabia in hope of finding the terrorists who invaded a U.S. compound, machine-gunned scores of off-duty military personnel, their wives and children, then detonated a car bomb or two to make sure they attained maximum mayhem. Foxx's team is operating with the tacit approval of the FBI chief, but clearly in violation of the stated U.S. policy, which is to let Saudi Arabian authorities handle all investigations on their soil.
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from "The Kingdom," from left to right. Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner, Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper. The guy in khaki uniform at right is a Saudi. |
If they're to succeed, they have to do it in just a few days and get out quickly before anyone even knows they were there. Well, of course, the bad guys know they're coming right away--and they face serious opposition at every turn.
If there's a moral to this story, it must be that we can't trust the Saudis, even though they're supposed to be our staunch allies in the Middle East. However, the film stops way short of indicting the Saudis and, in fact, celebrates the heroic stand of one Saudi military officer (Ashraf Barhom) assigned to help them accomplish their covert mission.
Foxx's team includes explosives expert Chris Cooper, Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner for 2002's "Adaptation,"; forensics expert Jennifer Garner, the former star of TV's "Alias," and Jason Bateman, a graduate of many TV sitcoms. We don't really see these people doing much expert work, mainly because they're trying to fight back against snipers, bombers and various killers all through the proceedings.
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for her life in an overturned military vehicle as terrorists attack. |
At times, the rapid directorial pace set by Peter Berg and his quick-cutting style become irritating because he seldom slows down enough to give you time to get to know--or care--about the people you're watching. Then again, "The Kingdom" wasn't made for people to talk about its themes around the water cooler. It's an all-out action film and in the final half hour, it rocks and rolls with such harrowing action that you can hardly take a breath--especially in the scene where terrorists have captured Bateman and are trying to cut his throat on camera while reading a political statement, all while his fellow commandos are shooting up half of Arabia trying to reach him in time.
Altogether, "The Kingdom" was a dissapointment to me, but it almost made up for everything with that truly exciting--and bloody--finale.
Though none of these films leaves you exactly uplifted in spirit, "In the Valley of Elah" and "Eastern Promises" are superb examples of modern filmmaking and I wouldn't miss them if you really want to see the best Hollywood has to offer these days.
©2007 by Ron Miller. The photos are courtesy of their respective studio publicity departments. This column first posted Oct. 3, 2007.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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